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Who’s Azher?

A business leader who's built and grown modern marketing capabilities (read: tech- & data-infused) for large agencies and their clients including FCB, Arnold, The Martin Agency and currently DDB. If you’d like to learn more, tap here.

Microsoft’s Connect developer conference kicked off Wednesday with some expected news: The next versions of the Visual Studio IDE have arrived on Windows and Mac. (Yep, you read that right.)

After a set of leaks from MSDN Magazine on Monday, the company officially confirmed Wednesday morning that it’s bestowing the Visual Studio brand on Xamarin Studio, a C# development environment for the Mac that the company acquired earlier this year when it bought the company of the same name. In addition, Microsoft’s confusingly named Visual Studio “15” has been officially renamed Visual Studio 2017 and given a release candidate at the show.

Fitbit and 2K Games have announced a collaboration that will provide in-game rewards in NBA 2K17 for a healthy lifestyle when wearing a Fitbit fitness tracker. Which Fitbit is right for me? Gamers who manage to walk 10,000 steps a day…

Donald Trump has routinely bragged about his nearly 12 million Twitter followers on the campaign trail.

But that number may actually be a bit misleading, according to a new study by digital ad firm eZanga, which looked at how much digital marketing money campaigns are wasting showing ads to automated bots that mimic human behavior.

The firm found that more than than one third of the Twitter accounts that follow the candidates of both major parties are not human — 39 percent, or 4.3 million, in the GOP nominee’s case and 37 percent, or 3.1 million of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s Twitter audience. Read more…

Instagram announced Thursday that it now has more than 500,000 advertisers, more than doubling its total over the past six months, and that more than 1.5 million businesses have converted to its new business profiles since that option was made available in June.

Instagram said in an email to SocialTimes that the top five countries in terms of ad adoption are:

U.S.

Brazil

U.K.

Australia

Canada

And the top five verticals are:

Consumer packaged goods

E-commerce

Retail

Entertainment

Technology

Instagram added in an Instagram for Business blog post that 50 percent of its users follow businesses and 60 percent learn about products and services through its network.

In addition, 75 percent of Instagram users take actions after being inspired by posts, such as visiting websites, searching, shopping or telling friends.

Vice president of monetization James Quarles said in an email to SocialTimes:

Alongside one of the fastest-growing communities, we’ve built a rapidly expanding and global business. With over 500,000 advertisers, we’re proving that Instagram is a place where inspiration sparks meaningful action for businesses, from finding new customers to driving sales.

Readers: Are you surprised at how quickly advertising on Instagram has grown?

First, Hulu laid the groundwork by releasing a virtual reality app for the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift headsets, and now, it’s looking to capitalize on it. The premium streaming service says it plans to release two serial programs exclusively for virtual reality headsets, according to Variety.

The new programs won’t even play on standard screen. They will only be accessible with a Gear VR or an Oculus Rift. Variety says Hulu plans to roll out its app to more virtual reality headsets in the future.